Managing the Image of France -- the surveillance of images by the Direction de l’Imprimerie, 1810-1881

 

George D. McKee ©
Binghamton University Libraries
Jan. 30, 2008

 

The official record of the publication of prints and photographs in France during the 19^th century exists in two forms:  the manuscript registers which survive at the Archives nationales de France, noting works received in legal deposit, and a published listing carried in the weekly issues of the official journal of the book trade, La Bibliographe de la France.  The procedure of legal deposit for prints, which generated this documentation, was required by law and enforced by prosecution after 1814 -- probably, it had been required for the publication of prints ever since the summer 1810 when its administration was transferred from the Cabinet des Estampes at the Bibliothèque impériale to the newly created Direction général de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie.  The publication of an official journal for notices of works received in legal deposit was the subject of an Imperial decree in October 1811 -- a decree had become necessary because the national police had just suppressed the quasi-official journal which previously carried the notices of authorized publications. [1]

The listings of prints and photographs in the Bibliographe de la France and its antecedent, the Journal général de l’Imprimerie, now form a digital resource for historical research known as the Image of France; the resource also contains the record of prints received at the Library before 1810, following the establishment of legal deposit for the protection of copyright in July, 1793.  Freely consulted on the Internet at:

<http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/mckee/>

…  it comprises almost 112,000 notices concerning, probably, four or five times as many single sheet works.  The resource – which is purely enumerative and contains no images – consists of the information filed by artists, photographers, printers and publishers at legal deposit, along with the date of the notice in the journal; usually, the date of a work's actual deposit was within the previous month or so.  Like the official journal, then, the Image of France traverses the governments, revolutions and warfare of the 19^th century in a weekly chronology of the production of imagery in single sheets – including multi-sheet series, cards, and simlar printed artifacts such as games, calendars, diagrams and fans – authorized for French distribution and export.  Its coverage has been terminated in 1880 out of practical necessity, although the journal carried listings of newly published imagery well into the twentieth century.  The limit of the Image of France corresponds roughly with the end of the regime of surveillance and regulation instituted by Bonaparte and dissolved by the “Loi sur la liberté de la presse” of 1881.  By this time, moreover, the market for single sheet prints would have been dissolving, with the development of photographic printing and the proliferation of images disseminated with, alongside and within printed text, i.e., illustrations.  The listings of prints and photographs in the Bibliographie de la France do not include textual illustrations in books and journals, unless an image were also issued separately, and the same, consequently, is true of the Image of France. [2]

Also, certainly, it is reasonable to suppose that the official record was much more thorough in an era of potentially severe regulatory law before 1881 than afterwards.  When consulting the listings, it is useful to keep in mind the relative incentive of legal compliance of the various parties to the publication of a print (or photograph).  Since the 17^th century, for example, the practice of engraving had benefitted from the legal status of a so-called liberal art; and while engravers were always subject to prosecution for the content of their work, their practice was not revocable.  The practice of lithographic printers, on the other hand, required licensing by the state after 1817 and was highly subject to revocation.  Whereas a work’s artist would not always have been legally responsible for its deposit, unless the artist were also shown to have published and distributed it, lithographic printers were always responsible for the filing of every edition from their presses.  Legislation of 1852 extended licensing and the obligation for filing to printers en taille-douce, many of whom welcomed the status as a commercial advantage.  Photographic printers do not appear to have needed licenses, but they too were responsible for the filing of publications from their presses, following a ruling of the cour de cassation in 1862.  The licensing of printers was finally abrogated in 1881, but a work’s printer remained responsible for its legal deposit for several generations thereafter. [3]

This procedure has two specific consequences for research of the listings of imagery in the journal and the Image of France.  Before 1848, the titles of prints often appear to have been grouped together without design, presumably, in the manner filed, reflecting the convenience and production habits of the printers who made the filings, rather than any meaningful collection of subjects.  In the registers of legal deposit after 1839, these groupings within a single filing were analyzed numerically by individual title, which had a considerable impact on the numerical totals for each year, yielding a much more accurate statistic of print production than the totals of listings in the journal. [4]

Secondly, because artists were often not subject to the obligation of deposit – and, consequently, not involved in its proceedure – the names of artists in the official record tend to be descriptively handled and may be omitted altogether, if not negligently transcribed.  Artists’ names occur in every variety and in all kinds of unexpected error, truly, “au gré du rédacteur.”  The absence of any indexing of the names of artists in the official journal similarly implies that artistic attribution was not a primary concern in the anticipated use of this information – nor, perhaps, even, in tracing a print’s distribution and origin.  The example of the artist Jean-Pierre Jazet is notable because he would also have filed some of his own works, being a dealer and publisher, as well as a prolific print-maker;  yet the Bibliographie de la France records him as “Jazel” on eleven occasions, and twice it is “Chazet.” [5]  Honoré Daumier’s prints are routinely listed only with reference to his monogram “H.D.”, not his name – which has the benefit, at least, of minimizing the occurrence of spelling or printing error.  The Image of France conserves these practices.

Agents of the police were instructed to consult the journal’s listings to determine whether on not a provocative print were properly filed and authorized, [6] but administrators certainly recognized the difficulties of consultation.  In the words of one report:

... chaque numéro du journal annonce dans un pêle-mêle inextricable les titres ainsi que la désignation des gravures et estampes autorisées. [7]

This problem was specifically addressed by the King in his ordonnance of 9 septembre 1835, by means of reference to the prints’ subject matter:

Art. 3.  Les autorisations ... seront insérées, chaque semaine, par ordre alphabétique et de matières, dans le Journal général de la librairie.

Subject headings, however, did not appear in the journal until January 1848, and title alphabetization beneath the headings was not always rigorous.  The Image of France provides a list of all of the subject headings (with minor normalizations of wording) used with the listings of prints in the journal over the next 32 years. 

A predominant concern for subject matter in the preparation of the listings is also evident from the addition of brief descriptions of the prints’ subjects following the record of their titles during the 1840’s.  Occurring in the registers of legal deposit as well as in the journal, these descriptions would have served as an aid to surveillance, although it is not clear that the added wording was required at the prints' deposit, rather than provided by the bureau’s agents.  Depository forms used at some eras during the 19^th century include alongside title information a space in which to record what the print (or photograph) represented, but this need not mean that the information was required. [8]

In passing, let’s also note that listings of photographs are interfiled under all relevant subject headings throughout the enumeration of prints in the journal, despite the use of a special subject heading for Photographies before 1857.  Briefly, in 1852-1853, the journal carried an entirely independent rubric for photographs with separately numbered listings, which are included in the Image of France.  In 1865, the Bureau of Printing opened a separate series of registers for the legal deposit of photographs, although on some occasions, if not routinely, photogravures were recorded in the registers for prints, not with photographs. [9]   It would be hazardous to try to identify the earliest notices of photographs in the legal deposit registers or in the journal, however, because the wording does not usually distinguish between photographs, on the one hand, and lithographs or engravings which were made after photographs.

There are fundamental questions about the legal status of print registration as a form of authorization to publish:  for example, did registration assure immunity from prosecution ? – was the Bureau of Printing empowered to refuse registration ?  Clearly, the publication of prints without registration was prosecuted: acquittals and convictions for this charge were officially tabulated alongside other délits de la presse. [10]   Furthermore, any right of publication provided by a filing would never have  been a protection against the subsequent prosecution of criminal libel and defamation:  an important purpose of the requirement of legal deposit was to facilitate review and referral for the deliberation of prosecution.  These questions became still more subtle with the legislation of apriori censorship of prints, which created explicit authority to obstruct distribution, as well as public exhibition, before a print was made available to the public.  According to the courts, the censor’s specific approval was required for publication, in addition to the receipt of legal deposit (1827); but apparently, even the censor's approval was not always a guarantee against subsequent prosecution. [11]   The procedures of registration and authorization were both administered by the Bureau of Printing, although there was an ancillary office in the National Police for the review of illustrations in journals during the Second Empire. [12]   Apriori censorship of prints (and, of course, photographs) was in effect between 1820-1830, 1835-1848 and 1852-1881; and the official record of publishing would have carried this further signification during these years.

Unfortunately, the bureau’s papers are not an especially rich source for studying its surveillance of print publishing.  In the words of the report quoted above, “n’ayant pu être classés dés l’origine avec tout l’ordre convenable,” the papers offer occasional insights but rarely any overview of policy, procedures and laws.  Future research needs to consider, as well, the bureau’s registers of correspondence – the record of its exchanges with the public and other governmental offices, such as the police and the state prosecutor.  All but unknown to scholarship, the registers note the nature of incidents, the principal individuals and, often, the titles of problematic works. [13]   Here, for example, is found the first sign of alarm over Daumier’s lithograph “Gargantua”, registered for legal deposit by the printer Delaporte on 16 December 1831 and on the same day referred to the  procureur du roi for consideration of prosecution.  There being no censor at the time to obstruct its publication, it was listed for sale in the Bibliographie de la France, December 24. [14]

A year and a half earlier, this source recorded another celebrated incident: deferral for prosecution of the issue of the journal La Silhouette containing Philipon's drawing of Charles X as a Jesuit.  Here we learn that the journal's printer, when summoned  to the Bureau's offices, claimed the print had been furnished to him "par le gérant du journal" and inserted without his knowledge while he was on jury duty at the Cour Royal.  Prosecution was sought for publication without authorization, "sans préjudice des poursuites que … paraîtra sans doute devoir nécéssiter le sujet même du dessin," and two of the journal's directors (but not Philipon) were later convicted of libel against the King. [15]

The registers of correspondence were meticulously prepared in this period, after January 1828, because they also served as feuilles de travail for purposes of administrative review of the bureau’s activities.  Consequently, some of the glosses are quite extensive.  Another example from the spring of 1830 raises the question that the civil servants at the Bureau of Printing may not have always been entirely sympathetic with the final round of ultra royalist administrators; it is a remonstrance to the police to exercise greater discretion in their pursuit of inflammatory prints, in this case, evidently, caricatures.  Unfortunately for the historian, if not for those associated with the prints' publication, their identity is not disclosed:

En réponse à sa lettre [2 juin 1830] on lui annonce que les deux lithographies qui y étaient jointes, avaient déjà été soumises.  On n’y a rien vu, sous le rapport des moeurs en religieux qui put à la rigeur en empêcher la poublication[sic], et elles ont, en conséquence été autorisées.  Il remarquera que dans l’exercice du droit de censure que la loi confère au gouvernement à l’égard des planches gravées, il est très difficile, pour ne pas dire impossible de fixer le point ou finit les choses permises et ou commencent les choses défendues.  On ne doit pas d’ailleurs confondre l’enjouement et la gaité avec la License et le vice, et tous ce qui ne porte pas ce dernier caractère ne saurait être repoussé.  Voilà pourquoi quelques caricatures, offrant peut être des allusions indirectes mais inofensives ont été permises.  Au reste, lorsque M.M. les Commissaires de police doutèrent qu’une gravure, qui leur paraitra blesser les convenances publiques, ait été approuvée, ils se transporteront chez l’auteur ou l’éditeur, et se feront représenter la permission inscrite sur une épreuve qui, aux termes des règlemens, doit rester entre ses mains.  Dans le cas ou cette justification ne pourrait être faite, ils opéreraient la saisie de la gravure, dresseraient procès verbal de contravention, et il transmettra le tout, afin qu’on puisse, après vérification, déférer les contravenans au Procureur du Roi. [16]

It is possible that this request for discretion in the face of over-zealous policing less than two months before the royalist coup d'état was provided for the incidental counsel of le comte de Peyronnet, the recently designated Minister of the Interior.

Not surprisingly, the documentation of apriori censorship is incomplete.  Its legislation was always politically contentious, as R.J. Goldstein has shown; [17] and successive administrations may not have had much reason to accept responsibility for record of the censorial activities of their discredited predecessors.  During the 1820’s, following the institution of apriori review, the Bureau of Printing regularly forwarded through the Ministry of the Interior statistics of the number of works refused authorization, but no record of titles appears to survive in the official archive. [18]   Is it possible that none was ever produced ?  

The register of refused prints after 1835 has been studied by M.P. Driskell. [19]  Its manner of inscription shows it to have been retroactively copied from other documentation rather than maintained on a daily basis.  The register includes some annotations of the eventual acceptance of prints after subsequent modifications, and the opportunity to obtain authorization by means of subsequent modification surely accounts for the occurrence of other similar examples, as well, in the listings of the Bibliographe de la France.  However, this determination is speculative because the record of refusals in this era does not distinguish between the two categories of prints published with and without accompanying texts – i.e., single sheets and illustrations:  after 1835, both were subject to apriori review, but only prints without accompanying texts are in the journal and in the Image of France.

Following the re-establishment of apriori censorship in 1852, the record of refused prints (and photographs) is fragmentary; and there is evidence of a system of internal reporting on the deliberation of problematic prints between more than one office; however, these references are numerically keyed and often too brief for identification of the prints. [20]

The record of refused prints after 1871 has been summarized by Goldstein. [21]   In addition, it is noteworthy that the registers of legal deposit for prints and photographs during this period often contain annotations such as “sans autorisation” and “S.A.”, as well as the more frequent note: “sans étalage,” evidently, to prohibit a work’s public exhibition, rather than its publication.   Nonetheless, most of these works appear to have been announced for publication in the Bibliographie de la France – which would seem to contradict the censor's intent.  Still more puzzling is a series of annotations in the legal deposit register of photographs between June 1871 and December 1873, noting retroactive annulments and withdrawals of authorizations during 1874 and 1875.  That is to say, numerous listings of photographs recorded for legal deposit between 1871 and 1873 carry annotations dated in 1874 and 1875 that the works’ authorization was revoked.  In one case, indeed, a photograph's authorization was not only, thus, revoked but then, according to a later pencilled annoation, reinstated. [22]   The legal constraints on censorship during this final decade of its apriori administration merit further research.  For example, an interpretation of the theory established in 1837, that exhibition and sale "sont des faits qui se renouvellent chaque jour" and, therefore, are subject to repeated authorization and refusal depending upon circumstances [23] might allow for this kind of variability, which would seem to trivialize the notion of authorization.

As noted above, the rule of censorship and other factors of the regime of surveillance instituted by Bonaparte, were ended by the so-called “loi sur la liberté de la presse” of 1881.  The law also implicitly abrogated paragraphs of the Code Penal of 1810 on the policing of prints and other publications; and it considerably narrowed the terms of criminal libel by the means of writings and images, while, nonetheless, leaving in place ample grounds for the conduct of prosecutions during the following generation. [24]

Transcriptions of the surviving registers of refused prints and photographs before 1870 may now be consulted at the Image of France website, separately from the main data file. [25]   This work has been specially assisted by the Section du 19e Siècle of the Archives nationales de France, since the registers themselves are not publicly communicable at present, due to their condition.  Their presentation will serve to illumine the circumstances in which the listings of the Image of France were produced; and as a demonstration of the official management of the consumption of imagery during the 19^th century, perhaps, it will contribute to study of the representation of social norms and ideals under conditions of authoritarian constraint.